EGGS!!

Eggs!!  At the tender age of nineteen weeks, one (or more) of my copper marans has produced two beautiful milk-chocolate colored eggs.  I've been noticing that someone was in the nest boxes as evidenced by the rearranged hay, but I was surprised and delighted on Wednesday when I found the first egg - not in the nest, but there's no points off here.  It's like becoming a chicken grandmother - I had very little to do with it, but I'm willing to bask  in the glow. 
In any case, the chickens continue to engage me in unexpected ways.  They "talk" when they are in the run, and when they see me coming they rush the doorway to see what I've brought for them - they LOVE treats - vegetable scraps, yogurt, cracked corn.  At night when I close them in, they've already put themselves to  bed, and they make some kind of sleepy noise - almost cooing - that's very relaxing.  I am still perplexed by my seeming seduction by chickens.  I certainly didn't think adding a responsibility to my life was something desirable, but it has turned out to be a very pleasurable "hobby".  They don't need to be walked,  they don't leave hair around the house, and they don't make anyone sneeze or complain about dander.  And they give eggs.  Beautiful, deep brown eggs.

How Time Flies (Or, must be having more fun than I thought)

Suddenly, it is September.  How could this be?  Five minutes ago I was looking at chicks and contemplating a coop, and here we are into September - coop's mostly done, chickens are BIG (not big enough for eggs yet, though) and my garden is giving out - tomatoes are nearly done; weeds are winning, the lone pumpkin is turning orange.  It's been, to say the least, quick. Possibly I was distracted by coop building, work, and life in general, but I regret to say I seem to have missed it. In any case, I must now turn my attentions to the "evening" of the garden - getting ready to clean out the beds, remove (hopefully) the weeds, trimming the bushes and removing the rest of the dead fall after the lovely Irene came through town. All in all, this saddens me, because I meant to pay attention this year, and savor the moments, but somehow it got away from me.  Perhaps I need to plan better - get some kind of schedule in place so I can get stuff done and not waste so much time on whatever I waste time on.  That's it - a schedule.  More attention to things that are important and less on the minutia of life like shopping, doing wash, paying bills.....   no?  Well, there's always hope.  Next year will be better. Next year I will seize the moments, and conquer the weeds, conquer the garden, get more done, lose weight, hit the lottery, etc, etc, etc.  Well, anyway, I can try.     

Me - A Chicken Farmer?

So, the chicks are here - in fact, have been here for three weeks, and are growing like crazy!   What started out as small balls of fluff that had to be shown where the water was, have begun to turn into .... chickens.   In fact, I had to go out and buy a bigger feeder - the chick feeder was too small to keep them happy all day while I'm at work, and by the time I get home, 11 desperate faces are cheeping away at me frantically. So, a bigger feeder has been acquired, and when it dries, I will place it in the brooder.  Meanwhile the three biggest chicks are getting feisty despite my having raised the walls of the brooder to 24 inches. I find them perched on the TOP of the wall, pooping on the garage floor - not a hit with the husband.  I briefly contemplated going higher, but it occurred to me that 1) not be able to take care of them as I could not reach in and 2) was shown the futility of the plan by noting that little Miss Parsley (a copper maran) was perched, not on the top of the wall, but on top of the pole that holds the heat lamp - a good 4 feet off the ground - looking at me with defiance.  Obviously, the coop needs to get going so that I can move them out to their home in a few weeks, or I'm liable to find chickens all over the garage.  Meanwhile, I find them even more interesting to watch, and am trying to find ways to encourage them to trust me, instead of running in fear most of the time.  Oh well, it's a work in progress.

The Chickens Are Coming! The Chickens Are Coming!

I hate to admit this - I have ordered chickens.  Don't ask me why.   I am not the kind of person easily swayed by little creatures - usually, anyway, but I have ordered chickens.  For some reason, they are a new adventure.   We had chickens last year, or more accurately, my daughter had chickens, but the romance was not "on" - they were stand-offish, and somewhat smelly, while being quite the curiosity for me, they were not my "cup of tea".  I put them in the "maybe someday" category of my life, and forgot about them.  This Spring, that seemed to change.  I was building a rabbit hutch for my grandchildren when one of the chickens they own jumped into it, and looked at me.  Yes, I know - How can a chicken look at someone?  - but this one did.  It flew up into the hutch, and cocked its head at me and looked at me, then clucked, and I was smitten.  Suddenly the chicken thing seemed to make perfect sense - I could see myself clucking among the chickens as they went along on their daily tasks of.. I dunno, eating, clucking and laying eggs.  Fatally, they were...cute.  In truth, I had no idea chickens could be so beautiful  Their feathers are simply amazing in their variety and color.  The one chicken I persuaded my daughter to buy is basically useless as an egg producer, yet has the most amazing green/black feathers I have ever seen.  Perhaps it is my lifelong fascination with birds in general that makes this chicken thing make sense.  In any case - I have ordered chickens, and am waiting, in anticipation, for the arrival of the first group tomorrow or Wednesday.  The brooder and all the accessories are in place.  All I need now - are some chickens.  I'll keep you posted.

The Lusty Month of May!

When I was a teenager I went on a class trip to see live theater for the first time.  It was amazing! The play was Camelot, and the part of Lancelot was played by Howard Keel.  I remember loving the music - especially the song "The Lusty Month of May" which begins "Tra la, it's May, the lusty month of May, the darling month when everyone throws self control away."  It's actually a song about human "indiscretion", but every May since, the song plays in my head just about this time as the air and earth warm, and nature awakens fully from the long winter.  This year is no exception.  The long, long white winter that covered the ground so totally for almost nine weeks was apparently just the ticket for the sleeping plants below.  Not only did I have a bonanza of daffodils, the peony garden I planted in 2007 (and have looked at in longing since) has not only finally settled in, but appears to be headed for a show stopping display - I'll keep you posted - but I have literally dozens of buds, just waiting......

I believe they call it Spring?

Well, I hate to say I got what I asked for, but my last posting in which I waxed poetic about  snow seems to have given free reign to old man Winter.  We had an incredible amount of snow - over 70 inches in total, I believe, and cold, cold, and more cold.  It got totally out of hand - long after the romance of a snowy night had passed, long after the crackle of a fire was enchanting, it continued to snow.  Bleh.
Now at last, we've passed March 20th, the day the calendar marks (clearly) as the first day of Spring.  Since then, we've had two snowstorms, and temperatures in the 30's or below almost every day.  Briefly, tauntingly, we had a warm-ish day or two late last week, but not the 50's we are supposed to be having.  I am really ready to move on.
As I went to the wood pile to collect some pieces for this evening's fire, I was distracted by something beneath the birch trees I planted a few years back - something green.   Now a couple of years ago I bought some daffodil bulbs from a co-worker's son during a fund raiser for the school, and put in three or four in a couple of spots out there and proceeded to forget about them.  Last year I saw them blooming, and picked a few for the table, but left an equal number to cheer up the neighborhood (and me) as people drove or walked by.  Nothing spectacular, just a bit of color. But  today on examination of that "something green" I find daffodils! Not just "a few" but MOBS of them, CLUMPS of them, too many to count.  Those modest little bulbs - probably no more than a dozen - have taken this past winter and gone to town, doing whatever little daffodil bulbs do to reproduce themselves, and they did so with a vengeance.So while the rest of us were hunkering down and running from our homes to our cars in an attempt to stay sheltered, beneath the snow those little bulbs were preparing for a visual feast called Spring.  I can't wait!

Winter in my town

Having lived the vast majority of my life in an extremely suburbanized area, moving to the town I live in now was a bit daunting.  The space, first of all, though desired, was a cause for concern - too big? Too dark?  How can it be maintained? From .19 acres to 2.3 was a leap of faith, and more than one friend told me I was making a "big mistake".  Now having lived here for four years I can say that not only was 2.3 acres a good idea, I could really have used more.  The sheer beauty of this place is beyond description, as today, following the first snowstorm of 2010 - 2011, I looked out the window and saw what I've never seen before - pink and blue shadows on the snow - the snow in my backyard.  Now I'm sure this exists where I used to live, but the sheer density of the population and the crowding of the homes prevents its being seen, and I'm here to tell you - it's stunning.  Something about the angle of the sun on the expanse of snow causes that trick of light, for I'm absolutely sure there is no pink snow out there, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  As quickly as it came, it left, as the sun shifted downward and the snow resumed its natural white, and now is fading to the purple shadows before dark. Quite the spectacle.  I look forward to many more snowy days to come.